Q: What role is science and technology expected to play to help Lagos State eradicate poverty?
Our policy thrust in Lagos State is to eradicate poverty and generate sustainable economic growth and development. We are consultants to all the MDAs and therefore any service you are getting from the government, we have a part to play. Generally, because we do that, we help them to deliver their services better. There is room for improvement.
Q: What is the state doing in the area of e-Governance?
What we are trying to do is to make the relationship between the government and the goverened more seamless; thereby you don't have to physically go to any government office to do certain things, like paying your taxes. You should be able to get your forms online.
What we are trying to do is to put all our information on the web. That will make it easier for people to do a lot from the comfort of their homes and offices.
This is an ongoing process and one of the things we are also doing is that we are working with some of the payment companies to ensure that for all the services you want to pay for, you can do that online using your ATM cards.
We have done the pilot and by the end of June, we would have launched a new website with a lot more features and information.
Essentially, people will be able to do the things they normally visit government offices for online.
Q: How has ICT enhanced internally generated revenue in the state?
Anything we do is aimed at supporting all government initiatives. Our internally generated revenue is one of the most impressive in the country. Like I said, it is now easier for people to pay their taxes. LIRS has done a good job in that regard. However, what we are doing now is to make it easier for people to pay by making it more electronic through the web.
There are 20 million people in Lagos and even though we have the highest ICT penetration in the country, it still doesn't distill to majority of the population. So, many people are still not enlightened about ICT and e-Payment options available. So, the infrastructure that will be made available to Lagosians would provide easy access to ICT applications.
Q: What is your take on the current poor quality of telecoms service in the country?
The reason for poor quality of telecoms service is best explained by the telcos, but for me, it is no brainer. I was in the telecoms industry for several years, so, I know quite much about the industry.
Lagos, for the smaller networks, generates 70 per cent of their revenues. For the bigger networks, between 30 and 40 per cent is generated. It only makes sense for them to ensure that consumers in the country in general and Lagos State in particular enjoy quality services. May be it is because the regulatory is not being as forceful as it was before.
I attended a number of customer forums where we represented Globacom then and people would make a lot of observations that the NCC would act on. But what we are seeing now is a continuous decrease in the quality of service.
For me, poor quality of service means less revenue for telcos and I wonder whether they are making too much money and they don't need more.
Q: But telcos complain that state governments, expecially Lagos, charge spurious taxes like Right of Way that affect network roll out?
Let me explain. We have an agency in Lagos that regulates Right of Way and we have also encouraged telcos not to come as a single entity. When GSM came to Nigeria, NITEL was supposed to provide backbone infrastructure as it happens everywhere in the world but that didn't happen. So, operators had to roll out their own infrastructure.
We have now become a relatively mature market with over 95 million active mobile subscribers. We don't want to dig our roads five times by different telcos. We have always encouraged them to come together with one request and we do it once and for all. We are doing a lot of massive road construction and we don't want that to be destroyed.
Besides, new roads are now being constructed to accommodate future expansion for telecoms operators.
The roads have ducts and gutters, so the new roads won't have that problem. I can understand that their infrastructure is becoming choked up but there are some other ways they can enhance their capacity and they should look at those ways. NCC has also encouraged them to share infrastructure. It's a smarter way of doing business.
I wonder why NCC hasn't clamped down on them. The current quality of service is unacceptable and we hope that the people in charge will take control. I am not even sure they are being penalised.
In the days that I was in Globacom and Visafone, NCC will give penalties when you didn't perform. I don't know if that is happening now.
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Autor(en)/Author(s): Nahimah Ajikanle Nurudeen
Quelle/Source: AllAfrica, 21.05.2012
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